Lunacy sadly does make for fantastic photos sometimes (14 Photos)

Thomas Prior‘s heart-racing photographs from the National Pyrotechnic Festival in Tultepec, Mexico show a different kind of firework celebration. The annual nine-day festival attracts more than 100,000 people to bathe in the glow of pyrotechnicians’ expert displays. The main event is the Pamplonada — a seven-hour running of the (wooden) bulls in which more than 200 timber-framed toros of fire roll through the streets with up to 4,000 fireworks on each in perpetual explosion. The National Pyrotechnic Festival takes place in honor of Saint John of God, the patron saint of hospitals, the sick, nurses, firefighters and alcoholics — quite fitting given the occasion’s flaming revelry and danger.